<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:gale="http://gale.tue.nl/adaptation">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../resources/style.css" type="text/css" />
<title></title>
<script type="text/javascript"> 
function toggleDivOL( elemID )
{
	var elem = document.getElementById( elemID );
	if( elem.style.display =='none' || elem.style.display =='')
	{
		elem.style.display = "inherit";
	}
	else
	{
		elem.style.display="none";
	}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>History</h1>

<p>Some people believe that that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans played different versions of tennis. Drawings and descriptions of
any tennis-like games have not been discovered, but a few Arabic words
dating from ancient Egyptian times are cited as evidence. The theory
goes that the name tennis derives from the Egyptian town of Tinnis
alongside the Nile and the word racquet evolved from the Arabic word for
palm of the hand, rahat.</p>

<p>Aside from these two words, evidence for any form of tennis
preceding the year 1000 is lacking, and most historians credit the first
origins of the game to 11th or 12th century French monks, who began
playing a crude handball against their monastery walls or over a rope
strung across a courtyard. The game took on the name jeu de paume, which
means “game of the hand.” Many who dispute more ancient origins argue
that tennis derived from the French tenez, which meant something to the
effect of “take this,” said as one player would serve to the other.</p>

<p>As the game became more popular, courtyard playing areas began to
be modified into indoor courts, where the ball was still played off the
walls. After bare hands were found too uncomfortable, players began
using a glove, then either a glove with webbing between the fingers or a
solid paddle, followed by webbing attached to a handle–essentially a
racquet. Rubber balls were still centuries away, so the ball was a wad
of hair, wool, or cork wrapped in string and cloth or leather, then in
later years, hand-stitched in felt to look something like a modern
baseball.The nobility learned the game from the monks, and some accounts
report as many as 1800 courts in France by the 13th century. The game
became such a popular diversion, both the Pope and Louis IV tried
unsuccessfully to ban it. It soon spread to England, where both Henry
VII and Henry VIII were avid players who promoted the building of more
courts.</p>

<p>By the year 1500, a wooden frame racquet strung with sheep gut
was in common use, as was a cork-cored ball weighing around three
ounces. The early tennis courts were quite different from the modern
“lawn tennis” court most of us are used to. The early game matured into
what is now called “real tennis,” and England’s Hampton Court, built in
1625, is still used today. Only a handful of such courts remain. It’s a
narrow, indoor court where the ball is played off walls that include a
number of openings and oddly angled surfaces toward which the players
aim for various strategic purposes. The net is five feet high on the
ends, but three feet in the middle, creating a pronounced droop.</p>

<table>
	<tr>
		<td>The game’s popularity dwindled almost to nothing during the
1700s, but in 1850, Charles Goodyear invented a vulcanization process
for rubber, and during the 1850s, players began to experiment with using
the bouncier rubber balls outdoors on grass courts. An outdoor game was,
of course, completely different from an indoor game played off walls, so
several new sets of rules were formulated.
<p>In 1874, Major Walter C. Wingfield patented in London the
equipment and rules for a game very similar to modern tennis. In the
same year, the first tennis courts appeared in the United States. By the
following year, equipment sets had been sold for use in Russia, India,
Canada, and China.</p>
<p>This history of tennis page gives interesting insight about how
tennis evolved into the game that we love to play. The sport of tennis
has been played for hundreds of years, but the game as it is known today
is about 130 years old.</p>
		</td>
		<td><img alt="Lawn tennis in the U.S., 1887" src=" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Lawn-tennis-Prang-1887.jpeg/325px-Lawn-tennis-Prang-1887.jpeg"/>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>
<p></p>







<div class="subcontent">
<div class="title"><a title="History"  class="neutral" href="javascript:toggleDivOL('history_1');"><span class="ball">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a><gale:a href="wimbledon">Wimbledon</gale:a></div> 
<div id="history_1" ><gale:attr-variable name="class" expr="${gale://gale.tue.nl/cam/tennis-as/wimbledon#visited}>0"/>

<p>In 1877, the All England Club held the first <gale:a href="wimbledon">Wimbledon</gale:a>
tournament, and its tournament committee came up with a rectangular
court and a set of rules that are essentially the game we know today.
The net was still five feet high at the sides, a carryover from the
game’s indoor ancestor, and the service boxes were 26 feet deep, but by
1882, the specifications had evolved to their current form.</p>
<table>
	<tr>
		<td>
<img width="200" src="http://www.myenglandtravel.com/images/london/wimbledon-tennis-club.JPG"/>
		</td>
		<td>
<p>The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is a private club
founded in 1868, originally as 'The All England Croquet Club'. Its first
ground was situated off Worple Road, Wimbledon.</p>

<p>In 1875, lawn tennis, a game devised by Major Walter Clopton
Wingfield a year or so earlier and originally called 'Sphairistike', was
added to the activities of the club. In the spring of 1877, the club was
re-titled 'The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club' and signalled
its change of name by instituting the first Lawn Tennis Championship. A
new code of laws (replacing the code until then administered by the
Marylebone Cricket Club) was drawn up for the event. Today's rules are
similar except for details such as the height of the net and posts and
the distance of the service line from the net. The only event held in
1877 was the Gentlemen's Singles, which was won by Spencer Gore, an old
Harrovian rackets player, from a field of 22. About 200 spectators paid
one shilling each to watch the final.</p>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

<p>The lawns at the ground were arranged so that the principal court
was located in the middle with the others arranged around it; hence the
title 'Centre Court', which was retained when the Club moved in 1922 to
the present site in Church Road, although not a true description of its
location. However, in 1980 four new courts were brought into commission
on the north side of the ground, which meant the Centre Court was once
more correctly defined. The opening of the new No. 1 Court in 1997
emphasised the description. Wimbledon is widely considered to be the
premier tennis tournament in the world and the priority of The All
England Lawn Tennis Club, which hosts The Championships, is to maintain
its leadership into the 21st century. To that end a long-term plan was
unveiled in 1993, intended to improve the quality of the event for
spectators, players, officials and neighbours.</p>

</div>
</div>

<div class="subcontent">
<div class="title"><a title="History" class="neutral" href="javascript:toggleDivOL('history_2');"><span class="ball">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a><gale:a href="aus_open">Australian Open</gale:a></div>
<div id="history_2" ><gale:attr-variable name="class" expr="${gale://gale.tue.nl/cam/tennis-as/aus_open#visited}>0"/>
<p>The <gale:a href="aus_open">Australian Open</gale:a> is managed by Tennis Australia, formerly
the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA), and was first played
at the Warehouseman's Cricket Ground in Melbourne in 1905. This
facility is now known as Albert Reserve Tennis Centre.</p>
<p>The tournament was first known as the Australasian
Championships and then became the Australian Championships, in 1927,
and the Australian Open in 1969. Since 1905, the Australian Open
has been staged in five Australian and two New Zealand cities as
follows: Melbourne (54 times), Sydney (17 times), Adelaide (14 times),
Brisbane (7 times), Perth (3 times), Christchurch (in 1906), and
Hastings (in 1912). In 1972, when it was decided to stage the
tournament in the same city each year, the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club
was selected because Melbourne attracted the biggest patronage.[5]
Though started in 1905, the tournament was not designated as being a
major championship until 1924, by the International Lawn Tennis
Federation (ILTF) in a 1923 meeting. The tournament committee changed
the structure of the tournament to include seeding at that time.</p>


</div>
</div>

<br/>
<br/>


<gale:test title="Let's Check it" total="1" action="#{#own_knowledge, value};" expr="100>${#own_knowledge}.intValue()" ask="1" alt="" verbose="true">
	<gale:question answers="3" right="1">
	The first Australian Open was played in:
		<gale:answer correct="false">Albert Reserve Tennis Centre	</gale:answer>
		<gale:answer correct="true">Warehouseman's Cricket Ground	</gale:answer>
		<gale:answer correct="false">Christchurch	</gale:answer>
	</gale:question>
	
</gale:test>

<p>
	s: <gale:variable expr="${#suitability}" />.
	v: <gale:variable expr="${#visited}" />.
	k: <gale:variable expr="${#knowledge}" />.
	ok: <gale:variable expr="${#own_knowledge}" />.
</p>

</body>
</html>
